A group of heavily armed anti-Islam protesters gathered outside a Mosque in the Irving suburb of Dallas, Texas, on Saturday, to oppose the announcement that the city is planning to accept 200 new Syrian refugees.

‘Veterans Before Refugees’

The small group of peaceful protesters carried AK-47s and shotguns as they demonstrated outside of the Islamic Center of Irving, Texas, claiming that the needs of U.S. military veterans should come before the needs of Syrian refugees.

The protesters calling themselves the Bureau of American Islamic Relations (BAIR), are advocating for “Veterans Before Refugees.” Their Facebook statement said:

“We will not allow Syrian refugees to come here from a war zone while thousands of veterans are sleeping on the streets and dying waiting for the VA healthcare they were promised when they took the oath.”

“We have people here that need our help,” BAIR founder David Wright III told the Dallas newspaper, alluding toTexas veterans who suffer from homelessness, mental illness, health issues, and poverty. Many of the BAIR group are veterans, including John Usener, a father of four, who served eight tours in Iraq, and is state captain for the BAIR-affiliated Three Percenters Texas. He went on to say:

“The state of Texas is still run by the people, and as long as I’m alive and there’s breath in my lungs and there’s ammo in this AK-47, that’s the way it’s going to be. And what I’m saying, what everyone here is saying is we don’t want Syrian refugees here.”

According to the Dallas Morning News, Wright was also concerned that the refugees were actually women and children, not military aged young men as most refugees have been in other locations. According to Breitbart:

The 2015 Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress found more than one in 10 adults experiencing homelessness nationally was a veteran, breaking down as 47,725 or 11 percent of the nation’s 436,921 homeless adults. According to AHAR, of those, 31,505 homeless veterans were sheltered while 16,220 remained unsheltered. Texas accounted for 5 percent of U.S. homeless veteran population.

Last year, Wright took a lot of heat from the mainstream media for publishing the names and addresses of Muslims and Muslim supporters who spoke at an Irving city council meeting to oppose a proposed American Laws for American Courts (ALAC) resolution. Wright did not create the list. The publicly posted list on the City of Irving’s website also included the names and addresses of those residents who spoke in support of the resolution.